Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-21/tgmwc-21-200.04
Last-Modified: 2000/11/16

Q. And you were a divisional commander at the time of the
occupation of the Sudetenland, were you not?

A. Yes. My position in the service at that time was
divisional commander, but when the Sudetenland was occupied
I was temporarily chief of the General Staff of that army
which marched in from Bavaria.

Q. And you were still a divisional commander when the rest
of Czechoslovakia was occupied, were you not?

A. Yes, indeed.

Q. And you were still a divisional commander while the
attack upon Poland was being planned?

A. Yes.

Q. Where was your division situated?

A. My division was in Lower Silesia and the Command H.Q. was
in Liegnitz.

Q. So that you personally were not very close to the OKH
planning from February, 1938, until the outbreak of the war?

A. No; I was in the OKH only up to the Anschluss in Austria,
because I had to remain in the OKH for a time in order to
hand over the affairs to my successor, General Halder.

Q. Now, you were engaged in the war against the Soviet Union
from the very beginning, were you not, m June, 1941?

A. Yes.

Q. And did you take command of the German 11th Army after
the death of General von Schubert?

A. Yes.

Q. And that was about the middle of September of 1941?

A. I believe I took over the command on the 21st or the 22nd
of September.

Q. And during 1941 and the first part of 1942 the 11th Army
which you commanded was fighting at the extreme southern end
of the front, was it not?

A. Yes.

Q. That is in the region north of the Black Sea?

A. Yes.

Q. And the 11th Army had captured Nikolajev just before you
took command?

                                                   [Page 64]

A. Yes.

Q. And your headquarters, when, you took command, were at
Nikolajev

A. Yes.

Q. Now, is it true that you have just been testifying that
Hitler had some very particular ideas concerning the methods
by which warfare on the Eastern Front should be carried?

A. Yes.

Q. Hitler thought that the occupied Russian territories
could best be subdued and pacified by the widespread use of
terror, did he not?

A. At the time, that was by no means clear to me. It was
only during the trial that I learned that.

Q. Did you not receive an order from the OKW that
terroristic means were to be used to keep order in the
occupied territories?

A. No, I could not, in my opinion, receive any order from
the OKW for my army. And I have no recollection of an order
to use terroristic methods, either.

Q. An order issued by the OKW could reach you through proper
channels through the OKH, could it not?

A. Yes.

Q. Will you please look at the document which is being
handed to you?

GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR: Your Lordship, that will be 459-PS,
and the USA number will be 926.

BY GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR:

Q. You will see from the heading on the document that it was
issued by the OKW on 23rd July, 1941.

A. Yes. But that, in my opinion, is a decision of the OKW,
because the heading says, "The Chief of the Supreme Command
of the Armed Forces." That is the OKW.

Q. Yes, that I stated. This is a document issued by the OKW.

DR. LATERNSER: I beg to apologise, but I shall have to
interrupt here. I ask that a German copy be submitted to the
witness. I gathered from his reply that he is quoting the
English text.

GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR: The witness has a German copy, I am
told.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you got a German copy?

THE WITNESS: Yes. A German copy is underneath.

BY GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR:

Q. I would like to read this document to you - and ask you a
question about it.

  "On 22nd July the Fuehrer, after receiving the C.-in-C.
  of the Army, issued the following orders with a view to
  supplementing and enlarging Directive No. 33."

And now, witness, will you turn to paragraph 6, please, the
last paragraph, paragraph 6? Have you found it?

A. Yes.

  Q. "In view of the vast size of the conquered territories
  in the East, the forces available for establishing
  security in these areas will be sufficient only if
  instead of punishing resistance by sentencing the guilty
  in a court of law the occupying forces spread such terror
  as is likely, by its mere existence, to crush every will
  to resist amongst the population.
  
  The respective commanders, together with available
  troops, should be made responsible for maintaining peace
  within their areas. The commanders must find the means of
  keeping order within their areas, not by demanding more
  security forces but by applying suitable, drastic
  measures."
  
  Signed by the defendant Keitel.

Did such an order never reach you, witness?

                                                   [Page 65]

A. I cannot remember the order. After all, it was issued
long before I became Commander-in-Chief and naturally not
every order that was issued before I became commander was
submitted to me. At any rate, I cannot recollect it.

Q. At the time this order was issued, you were a corps
commander, were you not?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it not plain on the face of this order that it could
only be carried out by wide distribution to troops and the
leaders of all the formations?

A. No, not necessarily. After all, the order contains
directives for the South-Eastern Front, the Centre-Eastern
Front, the North-Eastern Front, the Navy, and Air Force, and
also for security in the rear areas of the conquered
territory. At that time I was a long way from the front with
my Panzer Corps; actually, in July I was west of the
Ilmensee, where I was cut off and surrounded for a time. It
is quite impossible that an order would be sent to me
concerning the entire front; if it was done at all then I
would have received only an extract referring to my area.
But here the orders under Figure 6 are concerned with the
security of the rear areas, and the armoured corps which was
ahead of the front line of the infantry army had nothing to
do with these matters.

Q. The order plainly is meant to apply generally over the
entire front, is it not?

A. Yes, No. 6 naturally applies to the entire front. But an
armoured corps. which is ahead of the front and which is
continuously engaged in battle with enemy forces has nothing
to do with these measures; and even if the order had been
dispatched to me, it is not by any means certain that it
would have reached me. As a matter of fact I remember now
that in July when I was cut off, a very considerable portion
of our baggage-train from headquarters, including very
important documents, fell into enemy hands. Therefore, try
as I may, I cannot remember having received this order. In
fact, I do not believe it was dispatched to the corps at
all.

Q. If an army commander received this order, he could only
carry it out by distributing it down to his lower
formations; is that not right? That is the only way he could
carry it out?

A. He did not necessarily have to distribute it, because
Figure 6 mentioned conquered territories, that is to say,
rear areas; and the armoured group which I came under and
which had only two armoured corps in the lines nearest to
the front would not necessarily need to transmit this order
to the corps because the group itself had to secure its
small rear area without the two corps and, in fact, it did
so.

Q. So, assuming you were cut off at the time and never got
this order when it was issued, did not any of your fellow
generals in the other areas trained in the Prussian military
tradition ever speak to you about this order and indicate
they had received it?

A. Not one of them discussed the order with me. Only very
rarely can a Commander-in-Chief talk to other Commanders-in-
Chief. Whether they received the order, that I really could
not tell you.

Q. We will pass from that document. Now, Hitler regarded the
war on the Eastern Front as ideological war and race
conquest, did he not?

A. Yes, yes.

Q. And he wanted not only to conquer the Soviet Army but
also to wipe out the Soviet political system and he wanted
to set up a new political system in the areas which the Army
had captured, is that not true?

A. I do not understand what you mean by "a new system." What
are you referring to?

Q. A political system of political administration.

A. Naturally, the occupied territories must have some sort
of an administration.

                                                   [Page 66]

Q. He wanted an administration which would be very different
from the type of administration under the Soviet Government,
did he not?

A. Yes, since the National Socialist system was different
from the Soviet system in certain respects, it was necessary
for him to attempt to establish the administration
accordingly.

Q. Now, in order to set up a new political administration,
an administration that would operate peaceably so that the
territory could be exploited, Hitler was very anxious to
stamp out those parts of the population - those elements in
the population - who would oppose his aims, was he not?

A. I do not know whether that was clear from the start. At
any rate, he never told the military leaders of the plan.

Q. In order to help in carrying out these plans, did not the
OKW issue several orders to the commanding generals that
were quite extraordinary? I refer among other things to the
Commissar Order that you have mentioned.

A. The Commissar Order, after all, only affected the removal
of those Soviet elements who, shall we say, were supposed to
carry the war beyond the military into the ideological
sphere and to urge their troops to fight to the death. That
has nothing to do with the extermination of portions of the
population; at most, it was the removal of a certain class
of followers of the enemy armed forces whom he considered to
be more politicians than soldiers.

Q. I refer also to Hitler's well-known order of 13th May,
1947, which restricted the use of courts-martial in cases
where German soldiers had committed crimes against the
civilian population. Was not that part of this same plan?

A. Certainly, if such a plan of his did exist, then it was
part of his plan. But we did not follow that plan: As I
said, when we received this order from the Commander-in-
Chief of the Army, we employed our legal system in order to
punish the excesses in the interest of discipline. I have
already mentioned to you the example of the two death
sentences in my corps.

Q. Well, in fact, witness, were these views of Hitler and
the purposes of these orders very well known to you and the
other commanding generals on the Eastern Front?

A. No, we did not know that this order had a further
purpose, for instance, the purpose of exterminating people.
In fact, that thought never struck us at the time.

Q. Well, now, what elements in the Russian population did
the Germans think would be most likely to oppose their
economic and political aims in occupied territory?

A. I did not worry about that at the time as I had nothing
to do with the economic plans in the occupied territories,
nor with the political plan from which we were excluded. I
can only say that we soldiers had the one thought of keeping
the population in occupied territories quiet by treating
them reasonably, and our considerations did not go beyond
that.

Q. Whether you worried about it or not, did you not know who
Hitler and the other political leaders thought were the
elements in the Soviet population most likely to be
obstructive? I am asking you, did you not know?

A. Naturally, he considered the political commissars to be
harmful and to be our enemies; and that was expressed by him
in the Commissar Order. Apart from the Commissar Order, I do
not know to what extent he thought of annihilating such
elements; he did not tell us that, nor did we receive an
order to that effect.

Q. Did he not also think the Jews should be exterminated for
exactly the same reasons?

A. That may be; but never once did he discuss the question
of the Jews with me.

Q. You did not know anything about that?

A. No, I knew nothing of the plan of extermination.

                                                   [Page 67]

Q. I would like to ask you a few more questions about the
Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos. Are you telling the
Tribunal that you did not know that one of the most
important missions of those units was to assist in
exterminating the Commissars and the Jews in accordance with
these policies?

A. No, I did not know that.

Q. Was there an Einsatzgruppe attached to your army, the
11th Army?

A. Yes. As Ohlendorf has testified, this Einsatzgruppe was
active in the area of my army.

Q. I think you told us earlier that the Einsatzgruppe was
entirely under the orders of Himmler for operational
purposes. I think you also told us that Himmler was a bitter
enemy of the Army. What did you do when you learned there
was an Einsatzgruppe attached to the army? What were you
told about it?

A. At that time it was reported to me - I do not even know
if the name "Einsatzgruppe" was mentioned - that organs of
the SS were to investigate the population in the operation
zone from a political point of view and that they had
received orders for that from Himmler. I could not do
anything against that because I could not possibly assume
that these units of the SS were given criminal tasks.

Q. Is the Commander-in-Chief pleased to have an independent
unit operating in his area which he cannot order around? Is
that customary? Do you like it?

A. No, of course, one does not like it, but then there were
numerous other independent units. I should like to mention
that the Air Force did not come under our command in any
way. When we were fighting together we had to make
arrangements with them. We could not give them any orders.
The same applied to the Organization Todt and the
organization of the Economic Staff East, and to the police.
In short, we were confined to the actual military
leadership, and in the last analysis that is the best thing
for a soldier because, according to popular judgement, he
knows very little about other matters.

Q. Did it not even arouse your curiosity to have an
independent unit under Himmler's orders operating in your
area? Did it not stimulate you to find out what it was
doing?

A. The task of investigating the population for their
political reliability was reported to me. I have already
said that I was at Army Headquarters only for two or three
days after which I went to the front. I might say that the
actual fighting made such demands on me during the entire
winter when I was a commander that there was no room for
curiosity about things of which I could
have no idea.

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